What corruption?: Despite scandals, the GOP old guard in the U.S. House opts for minimal reform.

Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle |
February 3, 2006

FITTINGLY, but only because it was Groundhog Day, House Republicans were scared by the shadow of real ethical reform Thursday and jumped back into their burrow. Unfortunately, they probably will remain there far longer than six weeks.

Their election of Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, to succeed Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, as majority leader was only one manifestation of the determination of many House Republicans to bull past lobbying scandals with as small a measure of reform as possible.

This is the same John Boehner (pronounced bay-ner) who in the mid-1990s was caught handing out contributions from a tobacco political action committee on the House floor. Yes, the House floor. According to reports at the time, he stopped only when challenged by reform-minded Republican first-termers.

As one indignant Republican said at the time: "If it's not illegal, it should be."

In other words, don't get your hopes up that Boehner will play Moses, supplying Congress with new commandments against sin.

The only worse result would have been the election of Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who was DeLay's handpicked deputy and became acting majority leader when DeLay was forced to step aside after the spending of corporate dollars for political campaigns led to DeLay's indictment. At least Boehner, to his credit, had parted ways with DeLay some time ago.

It would, in fact, take a finely calibrated scientific instrument to discern differences between DeLay and Boehner or Blunt.

Boehner, despite making reformist noises in the leadership campaign, is a member in good standing of the Republicans' Business as Usual Caucus, whose adherents can be counted on to do the bidding of corporate lobbyists and who depend on those representatives and their well-heeled clients to fill their vast re-election kitties.

A first test of Boehner will be the role he plays in developing the lobbying reform package promised by House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Disclosure of the Republicans' full proposal has been delayed, in part because of members' resistance to anything that will keep them out of the trough.

The sense of many House Republicans seems to be that if they're going to get in bed with the lobby anyway, they might as well get the string of pearls that goes with the affair — or the free golf junket to Scotland and skybox seats at sports arenas.

Resistance formed against even the most basic reform, be it a ban on private funding for congressional travel or the merely cosmetic proposal (which the House adopted Wednesday) to kick former colleagues who have become lobbyists off the House floor and out of the members' gym. DeLay, for the record, voted against the measure.

This resistance undermines Hastert's pledge of far-reaching reform.

The stage for a nonreformer's election was set Wednesday in a closed-door session of House Republicans in which irredentists voiced pent up aggravation at the prospect of losing lobbyist-related perks.

The most hopeful sign — and we're grasping at straws here — was that 85 of the 200 or so House Republicans at the meeting were willing in a secret ballot to call for a fresh vote on all leaders except Speaker Hastert.

After that rebuff of even pro forma contrition, election of a less-than-compelling advocate for reform seemed — and was — foreordained.